


The Stars are Fire

by unicornpoe



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Always1895 Johnlock Fic Prompt Challenge, Angst, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, John is a Bit Not Good, John is a writer, Love at First Sight, M/M, Sherlock Is Not Okay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 17:33:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16100441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicornpoe/pseuds/unicornpoe
Summary: John Watson and Sherlock Holmes meet in a coffee shop; a story is begun.





	The Stars are Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FinAmour](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FinAmour/gifts).



> So this exploded from a fluffy little oneshot into a multi-chapter, far from fluffy fic with a plot and angst and everything. I hope you all enjoy this journey we're about to undergo. Thank you to FinAmour and to zigostia for encouragement and beta-ing. Nothing I write would ever be as good if not for you girls<3

John watches him.

Sits at the same table in the corner he’s been sitting at every day for the past two weeks, and pretends to write, and watches him.

John isn’t under any delusions. He knows he himself is not much to look at, especially after the blazing sun and the raining bullets and the putrid sick of the war, and the lingering weakness and the shattered shoulder and the broken mind of now. So he isn’t disappointed or even surprised when the man doesn’t watch him back. He simply sits. Drinks his coffee. Stares.

This man—standing tall and unbent behind the counter with his smooth, healthy skin, with his steady hands—has never known the unrelenting pound of an Afghan sun. He’s fit, but with a strength like a dancer’s or a swimmer’s; lean lines and coiled power, a feline grace. Strength born of choice rather than hardship.

He moves like water over stones; deliberate, showy, sporadic at times, and entirely enthralling. Arresting. Alluring. Arranging his limbs like nobody else. John wonders why no one watches him, and is then quietly glad that they don’t.

The man is darkness and light in a world that seems only grey. A study in extremes.

***

Sherlock looks his fill the first time that the man

_ (army doctor, Afghanistan, limp, shot in the leg—no, shoulder, it’s psychosomatic, isn’t it, yes—honourably discharged, shite therapist, cheap grey bedist, long lonely nights, war in his blood and pain in his smile) _

comes in. Reads his history in his cane and his tan and his mobile phone.

Reads his name on the credit card slip that he tucks into his apron pocket when nobody’s looking.

John Watson. John.

John.

Sherlock doesn’t let himself look again.

***

John Watson’s mornings look like this:

Wake up. Pain. Not enough that he feels it anymore, not physically, which is sometimes not good, because he doesn’t really feel anything else anymore, either, nothing but an ache of loneliness that’s so strong that it bleeds into terror sometimes and—

Get up. Wash face, brush teeth, get dressed. Slow, now, as slow as he possibly can, stretching each action to fill the long, empty drag of day (one more day you can make it do it one more that’s it  _ go) _ .

Eat. Something. An apple. Toast. Coffee? No. Eat.

Ignore gun in drawer. Don’t need it.  _ Don’t. _

Sit. Open word document. Stare at the blinking cursor until he sees it flashing on the backs of his eyelids when he closes his eyes, and then close the document, and then pack his laptop.

Coat: on. Shoes: tied. Cane: in hand.

Ride the tube looking straight ahead, jaw set, avoiding eye contact. Lean heavily on cane because he doesn’t have to sit his leg doesn’t hurt does not does not does not  _ does _ —sit heavily on bench, face red with shame, everyone staring at him (honourably discharged) (shot in the shoulder) (it’s psychosomatic) until his stop.

Get off. Limp into the cool grey morning. Try not to lean against the swell of morning commuters around him because he doesn’t  _ really _ want to, he doesn’t  _ know  _ any of them, it’s just… been. Yeah, it’s been a long time. Since people. And—

Enter cafe with laptop under one arm, eyes seeking.

Find him. Him. The man. Darkness and light, monochromatic, like a pen and ink drawing.

Smile.

Take a breath. Order a large coffee, cream, no sugar. Let himself lean into the sound of the man’s voice (“three fifty”) because that’s ok, the man isn’t watching him, the man can’t see.

Smile again, nod, take the cup, “thanks,” migrate to the corner table with the best view on a leg that doesn’t hurt anymore, sit.

Open laptop.

Watch.

***

Sherlock Holmes’ mornings look like this:

nothing

nothing

nothing

cold

move his body like a drip of molasses into a dusty cup, slooooow, in inches that make his joints twist in swollen stagnation

and his mind

moves faster

than than anything, than light, than

And sometimes, after the shock of cold tile against his bare feet, there is a case. Something to catch his body up with his mind and propel him forward with dizzying speed—better than drugs—

Usually there isn’t.

Warm water. Clean. Clothes: on. Trousers, shirt, suit, sometimes, because he knows better than anyone that appearance matters more than most things do.

Walk to work. Wind: blowing hair. Eyes: scanning city. Catalogue. Tastetouchseehear. Information flooding in faster than he can sort it,  _ synapses firing and blood flowing and heart beating _ , and blinks and is there.

Clock into work. Avoid the glares of his coworkers. Shoot his own darker glares back.

Wait for him to come in.

John.

breath quickening, pulse thundering,  _ dontlookdontlookdontlookdontlook _

“Three fifty.”

Turn. Avoid. Collect.

Heart pounding like a drum.

***

John has been a writer for as long as he can remember. Even as a child, when Harry was loud and boisterous and verbose, verbal enough for the both of them, John would simply let her speak; and then, John would write.

Nothing true—nothing he  _ knew _ was true. John Watson’s talent for the written word had its root in tall tales. Tales of magic, adventure, mystery, intrigue. Daring escapes from miserable lives, a chase across rooftops, a midnight-blue adventure through a winding wood.

Good versus evil. Light versus dark.

He knows better, now.

“You can’t exist on articles for medical journals forever, Johnny,” Harry had told him over the phone a few days ago. She’d been drunk, like usual, and earnest, because that’s how she gets.

He had sat on his bed with his feet placed together on the floor, and he’d been angry. Because that’s how he gets.

“You’ve got talent and you’re wasting it. You’re wasting your  _ life.” _

“Fuck off,” he’d said quietly, and then disconnected the call, because she has no  _ right  _ to say things like that to him. He should be saying those things to  _ her. _

They’d both be correct.

She’s right. He can’t exist on articles for medical journals because he might finally snap the rest of the way if he tries to do that. It hurts to write about something that he’s spent so much of his life doing; something that, thanks to a day spent dying on a stretch of golden sand, he can never do again.

But what else does he have?

Sometimes, it feels like he’s been doing nothing but searching since the beginning of time. And he doesn’t even know what he’s looking for.

***

Sherlock does not work here.

This is simply a compromise. A price. He is not  _ employed _ at this daft, plebeian little place, with its small comfortable sofas and hot, sub-par lattes, and boringboringboringboring patrons.

He refused to go to rehab after Overdose Number Four, and so Mycroft sent him here.

Sherlock doesn’t remember why, because Sherlock doesn’t care why. Everything that Mycroft says is stupidstupidstupid and Sherlock stopped listening to him long ago, even before his words stopped mattering, because it’s easier that way. All Sherlock knows is that he has to  _ exist _ here in this horrible coffee shop for one more week, has to refuse all cases for  _ one more week, _ and then—

And then he is free.

Mycroft checks in on him, from time to time. Prefers to keep up the facade that Sherlock is an idiot and couldn’t sneak anything in the world past Mycroft’s beady eyes and beak of a nose; that Mycroft will somehow find the drugs (he hasn’t; under the loose kitchen tile in front of the sink) or know if Sherlock is using them (he isn’t; doesn’t know why, but that’s stupid, too) or be able to stop Sherlock from solving cases (nobody can. Nobody in the fucking  _ world.  _ Even if the cases are just in his mind _ ). _

Sherlock suspects that the reason Mycroft is forcing him to stagnate in this horrid little place has to do with the things Sherlock both loves and loathes in equal measure:  _ people.  _ There are people  _ everywhere  _ here.

People

smilingtalkinglaughingcryingfightingwhisperingsippingbreathing

and Sherlock could leave here, yes of course, but he’d just go back to his flat, back to the absence of distraction, and Mycroft would send one of his leeches to spy on Sherlock, and he’d off himself by the end of the day.

So he stays.

***

John Watson’s afternoon looks like this:

Drink his coffee. Write four hundred words about strains of whooping cough. Stare at computer screen until his eyes begin to blur, then shift his focus abruptly and unashamedly towards the front counter.

Watch the man take someone’s order without looking at them. Accidentally write seven hundred words about the way the man’s slender hands move, pale against the ugly black buttons of the cash register, long and flighty like swallows. Tell himself he’s going to delete those words, and then move all seven hundred of them into a folder titled “heart disease.docx” where they will reside next to a few thousand words of the same nature.

Embarrassment. Turn down brightness on computer screen.

Pack up computer and pick up cane because he has trust issues, Ella was right about that, and even though he won’t admit it out loud he’s not an idiot, he  _ knows, _ it’s just that he doesn’t trust anyone  _ else _ to know, and go to the bathroom even though he doesn’t really have to, he just thinks that he probably stares a bit too much and he needs a reprieve.

Back out to corner table. Sit. Sigh.

***

Sherlock Holmes’ afternoon looks like this:

Pound the buttons of the cash register.

(Ignore John.)

Glare at customers until they either yell at him, or leave, or both.

Smile smugly when the owner of the coffee shop can do nothing but seethe at him, incapable of firing Sherlock due to Mycroft and his petty threats.

(Ignore John.)

Make coffee with as much aggression he can muster, spill hothothot liquid over counter with a vicious twist of his wrist, don’t clean it up because he revels in chaos.

Inform the woman in the large pink coat (secondhand) (belonged to her sister) that everybody knows about her gambling problem, dodge the scone she throws at his head.

(Ignore John.)

***

John knows he’s going to need to get a job. An army pension only lasts so long, and even  _ his _ flat—his tiny, cramped, bare, dead-feeling bedsit—costs money. He’s given himself a month to get used to living in London again, and the end of that month is fast approaching.

But no one is going to hire a broken thing like him. Not when he can’t even fix himself.

He’d been a brilliant doctor. A brilliant  _ army _ doctor. Fast, brave, efficient; the adrenaline fueled him, made him even better than he really was, and he’d risen through the ranks at dizzying speed. For every life he saved, another had been waiting next in line, and there wasn’t a single moment that he wasn’t moving, doing, saving, breathing,  _ living. _

And then, on a parched afternoon that had felt like a scene played in slow motion, like a long stretch of molten yellow river, everything stopped.

John will remember that day forever.

Bullets, whistling close. Too close, but there’s nothing he can do about it, not here on his knees in the scarlet-stained sand, blood smeared up his forearms, dying the faded tan of his uniform and gumming up under the nails of his ungloved-hands. There is a boy, crumpled like a discarded paper napkin, under John’s hands; his stomach is bared to the heat, brilliant red tissue and veiny pink membrane and jagged-edged flesh, blackened and burned by a bullet that John can’t retrieve, not here, not without things that he ran out of five days ago.

The boy is dying; his breaths are more liquid than air, and they don’t come quickly enough.

The sounds of war are muffled in John’s ears as he zeros in on his patient. He’s good at blocking out all outside distractions, at putting up walls around himself and the life he’s fighting for.

He still doesn’t regret it, even now. Maybe he should.

When the bullet hits him, the world stops moving.

In slow motion, he falls. Slams backwards onto the sand, one foot coming in contact with the body in front of him, his right cheek sinking into hot, yellow grit. Someone is wailing, and he doesn’t know who it is, but his throat burns and his eyes burn and his back is blistering, skin peeling and boiling and bubbling with the heat of the scalding sand. His shoulder is on fire; soon it will be gone, nothing more than a charred stump of ashy flesh, and he clutches at it, hands sinking into something warm and wet.

John forces his eyes open. The Afghanistan sky above him is a brilliant, blinding blue.

The sun pounds relentlessly down.

_ *** _

There is another man here in this coffee shop today that is ensnaring Sherlock’s attention; Sherlock lets him have it.

Approximately twenty-two years of age, Caucasian, almost as rich as the Holmes, failing med student, slept for four hours last night, hungover, contemplating stealing the wallet of the woman in the chair next to him with poorly-concealed nerves. His jeans are expensive but haven’t been washed in at least a week, his jersey from some inane unimportant boring stupid sports team displaying a hole where the sleeve and torso meet.

Sherlock feels a wave of disgust come over him. He despises criminals without a sense of adventure. He despises criminals who  _ can’t make up their minds.  _ They aren’t any  _ use _ to him unless they infringe upon the law; Lestrade wouldn’t let him arrest anyone on mere suspicion, even though Sherlock’s “suspicious” is worth far more than most people’s “abso-fucking-lutely sure” and Lestrade doesn’t really let him arrest people anyway.

“Steal it,” Sherlock whispers under his breath. He walks slowly and deliberately around the counter, pausing just in front of the display case of over-sugared baked goods and nestling his hands gently in his pockets. His mind is screaming. It’s been  _ too. Long.  _ To hell with Mycroft. This isn’t even a case, anyway, it isn’t even  _ anything  _ yet, but Sherlock’s blood is flowing in his veins instead pooling in sluggish streams and it’s pathetic, really, but.

The student stands, eyes shifting with rabbit-fear as he takes a few shuffling steps to his left and then flicks his fingers out in a subtle enough move that Sherlock is grudgingly impressed. The boy snags the wallet out of the woman’s bright red purse (hanging on the back of her chair like a beacon to anyone with even slightly nifty fingers) and shoves it in the pocket of his baggy jeans and Sherlock smiles with the edge of his lips, stepping forward to intercept him—

“Hey!”

Every head in the cafe swivels to face the back corner where the noise came from, including the thief’s. Including Sherlock’s.

John.

He’s standing, moving through the sea of seated people with an ease that’s enthralling on him, eyes fixed on the boy with steady, steady intensity. Sherlock’s breath catches in his chest as he watches him; he can’t seem to look away from the firm spread of John’s shoulders beneath his dark green cardigan, and he feels a little bit proud, because average people probably don’t see through the layers of wool to the glory of John Watson underneath. Sherlock does. Sherlock is clever.

John stops directly in front of the thief. He is very small, and very powerful. He holds out a hand.

“Give it back.”

Sherlock knows what is going to happen three point nine seconds before it actually does. He does nothing to stop it.

The boy’s eyes flare with panic and he bolts, shoving past the cloud of people that’s built up in front of the door and dashing out into the street. John wastes absolutely no time in following him and it’s glorious; his expression doesn’t shift from a line of grim-tinged pleasantry as he breaks into a casual sprint.

Sherlock follows him, but gets stuck in the crowd that has reformed around the door. He growls and shoves and pushes and finally breaks through, stumbling outside just in time to see…

Oh dear lord.

Nothing. Nothing is going on and everything is going on and Sherlock is terrifically confused and confusingly delighted by the turn of events.

John Watson is standing calmly in the middle of the sidewalk, his hands clasped loosely behind his back, his feet a shoulder-width apart. The boy is standing in front of him, clutching his cheek and gasping in pain, and the wallet sits on the concrete between them obediently.

“Right,” John says. He’s smiling. Sherlock trots closet and wonders why he can’t breathe because  _ he _ isn’t the one that’s just punched someone. “So you’re going to pick that up and then you’re going to return it to that woman—there’s a good lad—and you’re going to leave here and never fucking come back.”

Possibly the boy does. Possibly lots of things happen, because Sherlock feels movement around him, feels people pushing past him and skimming the fabric of his shirt with their clumsy existences, but Sherlock doesn’t notice because he’s broken his own rule and is staringstaringstaring at John Watson and John is staring  _ back. _

Sherlock opens his mouth to say something clever, and instead says, “Move in with me.”

John’s eyebrows are impressed by this; they lift, lodge themselves closer to his hairline than before. John’s mouth is confused by this; the corners turn down a little bit, pucker.

“Well,” he says after a few moments of heart-stopping silence in which Sherlock can feel ice filling all of his bones, “Um. I’m. Flattered, yeah, I am, but I think it’s a bit soon, isn’t it?” He laughs awkwardly, cups the back of his neck with one hand. The buttons on the front of his cardigan (round, brown) tug. “You haven’t even bought me dinner.”

“That can be arranged,” Sherlock says earnestly, and John laughs again. Sherlock doesn’t know why. This is no laughing matter.

“I suppose that’s true.” The corners of John’s mouth are becoming gradually more interested in this conversation. “Shouldn’t we, oh, I don’t know, at least know each other’s names first?”

“Your name is John Watson,” Sherlock says. He pats the front pocket of his jeans where the receipt he nicked resides in an unconscious movement, and it crinkles through the fabric.

John’s expression doesn’t shift; he watches Sherlock with eyes that are sea-storm blue. “Got it in one,” he says at last.

“My name’s Sherlock Holmes,” Sherlock provides after a brief period of silence.

John smiles half a smile. It feels like winning.

“My address is—”

“Woah, alright, easy tiger,” John says, holding up the palm of his hand.

Frustrated (heart beating) Sherlock sighs. He needs more  _ proof,  _ he needs to be clever, he needs to be alluring. “You’re a doctor,” he says, gesturing at John expansively. John nods. “An  _ Army _ doctor, recently invalided home from Afghanistan. You were good.  _ Very  _ good. You walk with a cane even though you don’t need one, your limp’s psychosomatic, obvious, dull, you know it, I know it, your therapist knows it. You live off of a pension but it’s not enough, and you’re looking for a job that will fulfil you even though you know you’ll end up doing what you  _ should _ do rather than what you  _ want _ to do.” He tilts his head slowly to the side as he takes in the curl of John’s fingers, the flicker of his fever-blue irises. “Oh,” Sherlock breathes, stepping closer. “You’re a writer.”

John’s jaw is slack with awe. “That,” he says slowly, his voice just loud enough to be heard over the sound of traffic—and it’s raining, Sherlock realizes, misting down and down— “was amazing.” He shakes his head gently, a smile blooming on his lips, and Sherlock preens. He doesn’t pretend to be immune to praise, even if he never directly asks for it, and besides. It’s been a while. “God—god that was  _ brilliant.  _ How did you… how did you know?”

“I’m a genius,” Sherlock says. He’s surprised with how low his voice is; lulling and smooth and cajoling. “A consulting detective.”

John laughs like he can’t believe what he’s just heard. His face is brighter than Sherlock knew faces could be. “A consultant whatsit? Detective? Huh. Well. That’s. I mean I’ve never heard of it but that makes sense, you’d have to be something exotic, wouldn’t you?”

Sherlock is briefly, and for the first time in recent memory, at a loss for words.

It’s uncomfortable.

“Well,” John says cheerfully, sliding his small, strangely elegant hands into his pockets, “It was  _ wonderful _ to meet you, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”

“Wait—” Sherlock blinks at him. It hadn’t worked.  _ Why _ hadn’t it worked? (Things are moving fastfastfast). John is impressed, Sherlock can tell, and not annoyed which hurts Sherlock’s chest in a good way and… he’s leaving. “Where are you going?”

“Home,” John says. His smile has faded but none of the feeling radiating off of him has, and Sherlock thinks, suddenly, that he would do anything to keep this small, hurting man.

“You hate it there. Move in with me.”

John looks over his shoulder, catching Sherlock’s gaze and holding it. “Ta,” he says. “I’ll be back.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come chat with me on twitter @unicornpoe!


End file.
